So it�s Day Three of Mom-Watch, and the seas have become predictably choppy. We�re not at each other�s throats, or anything, but tensions kind of come and go. I love my mother, I really do, but it drives me insane that she can�t let me be out of her sight for more than thirty seconds before she comes looking for me and asking what I�m doing. I�m not kidding about this. Try to imagine a week of your life where you can�t sit on the toilet for more than thirty seconds before your mother knocks on the door and asks what you�re doing and if you�re okay. What does she think I�m doing, I�d like to know? Just once when I was a teenager I told her I was committing suicide, but she acted like she didn�t understand those words. Finally I screamed out, �I�M TAKING A SHIT!� and she said, �Oh, okay�I was just curious!� What the hell normal person is �curious� about what others do in the bathroom, aside from maybe an undercover policeman?
My mother is not normal. She also patently refuses to get any rest at all so as to recuperate in a timely fashion. Regardless of how many times I tell her to just call for me when she needs anything (food, drink, clean-up in Aisle 5), she insists on trying to do it all for herself. If I turn my back on her for a minute or two�like, say, to go to the bathroom�she�ll sneak into the kitchen and try to make dinner. Then she bitches about how tired she is all the time and how her incision hurts, and how much worse she feels than she did after her last surgery. Which, of course she felt better the last time�last time she was on so many drugs, she practically reached nirvana.
Just now, she called to me from the living to ask what I was doing. I�ve been typing for five minutes, after all.
It isn�t all difficult, though, of course. We really do get along, and we�ve had some fun experiences already. Like yesterday morning, when I accidentally got us locked out of the house! It wasn�t entirely my fault, since I just pulled the connecting door to the garage shut behind us when we were going to go to the grocery store. Or, so I thought. For whatever reason, she�d left the keys inside the house, and since someone (my sister, apparently) had pre-set the lock on the door, we were fucked. Neither of us had our cell phones, either. So as my mother shuffled from door to door, carrying her catheter bag, trying to find a neighbor at home with a telephone, I scaled the side of the building and let myself in through the second-floor balcony.
As we have grown older, however, our television viewing preferences have diverged somewhat. The woman has a nearly supernatural ability to find a marathon of old M*A*S*H episodes at any time of day. It�s uncanny. If I never see another episode of M*A*S*H as long as I live, I�ll be a grateful man.
�What are you doing?� Count: Two. Answer: �Still typing.�
Another thing my mother insists on watching (in between episodes of M*A*S*H, of course�which, I�d like to point out, she�s seen so many times she can recite every single line along with the characters), is The Weather Channel. She�ll watch the weather the way some people watch The Lord of the Rings. She�ll keep it on all afternoon, just riveted to maps depicting low fronts moving in from the southeast, and precipitation forming in the north, and blah blah blah. Sure, it�s good to know what to expect from the heavens, but how does this hold her attention for hours on end? When I want to know the temperature, I just step outside for a second to figure out if I need a sweater or not.
I wouldn�t mind this all so much if she didn�t nag me incessantly when I try to tune in to one of my favorite shows. She never wants any help with anything until one of my shows comes on, I�d like to point out. And although she can sit through storm graphics for two straight hours, heaven help me if I try to watch anything that�s not on CBS.
I love my mother, but there�s a reason most young eventually leave the nest, you know?.
Someone Got Here By Searching For: �naked dinner parties� I�m Watching: The Weather Channel. The WEATHER CHANNEL, people! I�m Reading: Still plugging away at The Lost Continent. Given how my options are M*A*S*H, The Weather Channel, and my book, you�d think I�d have finished it long before now.